


the company you keep

by fitztomania



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Dubious Consent, M/M, Masochism, Post-The Dream Thieves, Property Destruction, The Dream Thieves Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6976018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fitztomania/pseuds/fitztomania
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Grieving. Like Ronan was anyone else; like K was his family, or his lover.</p><p>/Ronan mourns Kavinsky, and questions their relationship. Adam helps, kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Missing Tooth

Ronan Lynch was unknowable, and he lived with every sort of secret. Even the small, human ones. 

Joseph Kavinsky's death affected him more than he thought it would. For days he mistook it for shock, just the manner of his death that fucked with him so much: one moment, Kavinsky had been there, and Ronan would not ever dream with him or fuck him again; and the next, he'd gone up in flames, and Ronan _could_ not ever dream with him or fuck him again. It had been messy and unexpected, and K was just as young as the rest of them—as young, if not quite as full of promise. 

He thought maybe it just reminded him of his own mortality, of the veil whispering just out of reach. Of how easily it could have been him.  

Then, he thought it was guilt. K had died because of _him_. In more lucid—more _sober_ —moments Ronan remembered that K had been on a fast track to die young before Ronan ever got to him, but the facts remained. This particular death was his doing, and that was what mattered. 

Adam could not understand this, hypocrite that he was. If anyone should've fundamentally _gotten_ the disproportionate amount of blame Ronan was heaping on himself, how much he wanted to be _angry_ at himself for this, it should have been him. It drove Ronan bugshit.  

"It wasn't _you_ , Lynch," Adam said late one night, about three weeks after it happened, "you know that, right?" 

They were all sitting on the floor, gathered around Gansey's Henrietta model as he and Adam rigged the cardboard buildings up with Christmas lights. Gansey had managed to coax Ronan out of his room with a promise to share a beer with him, though his own remained unopened. Ronan was on his second. 

He didn't answer.  

The first week had been shock; the second and most of the third, a gnawing, crippling existential self-hatred. For the last few days, he'd been working at a different kind of grieving, picking at it with a single-minded intensity that was like worrying at the hole where a missing tooth had been. 

Ronan _missed_ him. He missed K's violent attentions; he missed being the object of K's thousand-watt obsession.  

In more lucid—more _sober_ —moments Ronan knew that he was idealizing him, and their relationship, in a way that would definitely be classified (he could hear it in Gansey's voice) as _unhealthy._ He remembered that he'd been done, even before Matthew had been roped into everything. He heard himself saying _It was never going to be me and you._  

K's death shouldn't have changed the way Ronan felt about him; death did not change the life before it, Ronan was a staunch believer in that. But somehow, it did. He'd been done, but death had gone and robbed him of the choice, and now he wasn't sure whether he would have made it anymore. 

More than anything, he missed the distraction. With Kavinsky, with the drugs and the parties and the racing and the dreaming and the raw, primal fucking that left Ronan cross-eyed and useless for days, he hadn't had the energy left to dwell on Adam and his broad hands and fine-boned face, or the certain way he sounded when he said _Ronan_ instead of _Lynch—_ K took up too much space. He had climbed into Ronan's head and made a home there, and he simply didn't leave room for anything else.  

Now, he was gone, and so were most of the marks he'd left on Ronan. That space he'd occupied was painfully, echoingly vacant, and Adam kept crawling in.  

" _Ronan_ ," Adam said now. Gansey's mouth tightened, but he kept his head down. "Come on. You have to know it wasn't your fault."  

Ronan gazed at him balefully over the neck of his bottle, held between his knees. It felt like he hadn't used his voice in years. 

"I mean. . . " Adam seemed to be at a loss for words. His fingers fluttered, digging through the air; he flopped his hands open in an exasperated sort of way. "God, it's _Kavinsky_." 

" _Adam_ ," Gansey said warningly, but Ronan was already getting to his feet with the soft-boned lurch that seemed to be the only way he could move these days, and slamming the door to his room behind him with a solid _bang_. 

He put the bottle on his nightstand and fell onto his mattress. He lay on his stomach, with his face in his pillow and his arms wrapped tight around it, biting back curses because he knew they were listening. 

 _I don't get it_ , he heard Adam say after a moment. His voice was frustrated, and he wasn't bothering to keep it down. _It's Kavinsky. He's been killing himself for years. He could've killed Ronan, too—what did he_ think _was going to happen?_  

Ronan heard Gansey sigh, and knew he was pinching the bridge of his nose. _Adam_ , he said (in that same long-suffering, overly patient tone he always used to say _Down, Lynch_ and which irritated Ronan to no end, because he could think of so many other ways he wanted to hear Gansey say _Down, Lynch), you're smart, yes? Top of our class?_  

Adam was defensive, as he always was about his intelligence. _What does that have to do with anything?_  

 _Use that big brain of yours for a second, and_ think. 

 _About what?_  

 _About Lynch and Kavinsky, idiot. Just think about it. It'll come to you._  

Chainsaw snored gently in her open cage. Ronan held in his breath, quietly, desperately hoping Gansey didn't mean what he thought he meant.  

 _Oh_ , Adam said suddenly. _OH._   

 _Got there, have you?_  

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. 

 _They were_ _—that's—_ Adam was clearly having trouble wrapping his head around it, and there was an undercurrent to his voice that sounded horribly like disgusted disbelief. _How do you know? Did he tell you?_  

 _I think,_ Gansey said, and here his voice lowered a bit, _that he doesn't think I know, and I haven't told him I do._  

Ronan understood all the implications of this in a single bright, hot bolt. The only reason he had even considered anything with Kavinsky was because he was _so sure_ Gansey would never know, and by extension, _Adam_ would never know. He had said so out loud, that first time, watching Kavinsky lick hungry lines down his stomach with a delirious sort of something swelling behind his eyes.  

 _This can't get around,_ he'd said as firmly as he could manage, and gasped as K bit down. _You hear me, K? No one can know._  

 _You mean_ Dick _can't know,_ Kavinsky had corrected him, reaching to unzip his pants. Ronan shoved his hand into K's stupid undercut and forced his head back, and K fixed him with an exasperated look. 

 _Relax, Lynch,_ he'd conceded. His eyes looked small and pale without his sunglasses. _You think I want anyone knowing about this?_  

He had, he now realized, been incredibly, inexcusably optimistic to think it wouldn't get out. He didn't think anyone had _told_ Gansey—it was much more likely that he himself had given it away, in the scrapes on his palms or the way the necks of his t-shirts stretched, or in a mouth-shaped mark he'd forgotten to cover up after showering.  

He and Gansey lived together. They were constantly tripping over each other with their eyes and their feet and their hands. He had been incredibly, inexcusably stupid to think he could hide _anything_ from Gansey after this long. 

In the other room, Adam laughed mirthlessly. Whatever hope Ronan had been harboring that Adam could ever— _would_ ever—was extinguished in that laugh. _Seems kind of important, Gansey. Kavinsky was_ _—_  

 _Kavinsky was a lot of things._  

But Ronan wanted to hear what Adam thought Kavinsky was; what he thought _Ronan_ was. He pressed his hands to his eyes until he saw pixellated stars.  

 _Gansey—_  

There was a small _snap_ and Gansey swore loudly, then hushed himself again. _Look,_ _I f_ _ucking hated the guy, okay? Believe me, I feel just as—icky—about it, as you do. When I think what he—but he meant a lot to Ronan, and he's grieving. So. . . try not to be a complete prick about it. Okay?_  

Adam didn't answer. Ronan wished he were somewhere, anywhere else. _Grieving_. Like Ronan was anyone else; like K was his family, or his _lover._ Like Ronan was going to put on a _suit_ and stand by his grave with _flowers_ and go to _therapy_.  

 _Adam,_ Gansey said in that same no-nonsense warning tone. 

 _Okay! Fine._  

Ronan reached for his headphones, plugged into his stereo and hung on the bedpost nearest him. There was a reassuring pressure to the way they cupped his ears.  

He thought, singularly and clearly, _Dad's music_. The Irish pipes began to keen through the wires, starting off low and then raising in volume until Ronan was just on the verge of not being able to stand it. Chainsaw lifted her head to give him a disapproving look over one wing, like she could hear them. Chainsaw did not care for the Irish pipes one bit.  

He closed his eyes, and missed feeling unknowable. 


	2. Slipping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan was unknowable. Ronan was known. He was slipping.

Later, though Ronan could not hear it, Adam said to Gansey, "I should talk to him. About. . . this." 

Gansey, gluing a light into place, just sighed.  

"I can't see him like this," Adam said, a touch defensively. "I don't know how you can." 

Gansey cast him a tired look over the rims of his glasses, and Adam instantly regretted his words. Of course he couldn't—this particular Ronan was just out of his depth. 

Ronan, facing the wall, didn't hear Adam's practiced light-fingered knock (perfected from growing up in a house where he was forbidden to exist anything but quietly). He didn't hear the door push open, or the soft _click_ of it closing again. He didn't feel Adam's presence as he stood behind Ronan for a long moment—taking in, as he didn't often get to do, his tattooed back and the sharp, reptilian curve of his spine, stark contrast washed dull gold in the glow of his desk lamp.  

Ronan only opened his eyes when his mattress dipped down near his knees, jackknifed up close to his body, and Adam came into view.  

He propped himself against the wall and wet his lips, indicating that he wanted to talk. Ronan didn't remove his headphones, but lowered the volume to a whisper. 

"The door was closed," he said. It came out hoarse and ragged. Pathetic. 

Adam shrugged, by way of excuse. "I knocked." 

"Did you _want_ something?" 

Adam flinched a little at that, looking abashed. 

"I," he started, then closed his mouth again. His brow was working down over his eyes in a peculiar way that made Ronan feel ill. 

He tugged his headphones down around his neck. "Spit it out, Parrish." _Put me out of my misery._  

"Ronan," Adam said. Under the pillow, Ronan's fingernails bit into his palms. "I'm sorry. About—what I said." 

Ronan's jaw clenched. "Don’t be," he said, bitterness creeping into his voice. "You said what you meant." 

"Yes, but it was stupid. Of course he was important to you." 

Ronan felt his face contort, felt his eyes narrow into hard slits. He hissed, "You don't know _anything_." 

"I know. . . a little of it," Adam said hesitantly. Confessing. "I know _you_." 

But that wasn't true, couldn't be true. Ronan was unknowable. Ronan was known. He was slipping.  

He said in a low growl, "What do you _want_?" 

"I _wanted_ to say I'm sorry. For stepping on your feelings. I didn't mean to." 

"I have no feelings," Ronan said absurdly.  

"Oh _come on_ , Ronan," Adam sighed. "Look—what do you want me to say?" 

He had no idea. "Be _honest_." 

Adam huffed out a little laugh and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. "You want me to be honest. Okay, _honestly_ —I thought Kavinsky was a creep. All right? I thought he was going to get you killed. _Honestly_. And _honestly_ , I don't really give a shit that he's dead. I'm not _glad_ about it, and you know what, sure, if you want to make the argument that he was _cut down in his prime_ or whatever—" 

"Is this your way of apologizing?" Ronan mumbled, closing his eyes.  

"—but _honestly_ , the only reason I care at all is because of how much it is _clearly_ fucking with you. Look at you. You're a mess." 

"Thanks, Parrish, I feel a lot better now," Ronan said acidly. "You wanna say something about my dad next? Maybe my dead aunt? Maybe you could kick my bird around a little—" 

"You _cared_ , Ronan. It's okay to say it." 

But Ronan didn't want to, and he wouldn't. Not to anyone. And especially not to Adam. He'd heard the judgment in his voice. He knew what Adam would think of him. 

"It didn't make any sense to me," Adam said. His voice was gentle, now he had said what he wanted to. "I didn't get it. I thought you hated him—I didn't even know you _knew_ him, you know, outside of school, or when he would pull up next to us sometimes and try to get you to race him. . . But Gansey said that you—that you guys were—um."

This couldn't be happening. Ronan willed his mattress to open up, the factory below them to reach up with ghostly hands and pull him down into its sleeping jaws. 

"No," he said, "go on. Gansey said we were _what_ , exactly?"  

Adam's face flushed. "I mean, if you were. It makes sense why you would be upset." 

He didn't want to say the words. No: he _couldn't bring himself_ to say them. Ronan felt himself growing thorns. He heard, very clearly, Robert Parrish's unbidden voice, saw the hateful way his lips formed around the word _Fag_. 

"Fucking _ask_ me, Parrish. You're obviously dying to." 

Adam was flustered. "I mean, were you—were you—" 

"Was I fucking him? _Yes_." 

The silence that followed was very loud.  

Ronan braced himself for the disgust, for the shove.  Not because he was (he heard it whispered, always whispered, in Gansey's voice) _gay_ ; nobody cared about that. Because it was _Kavinsky_. Because Adam had heard the same rumors Ronan had about his bed-hopping and drug-sharing habits, and couldn't possibly know how many times Ronan had had himself checked since. Because Kavinsky was Kavinsky, and Ronan was Gansey's, and Gansey would never. 

Ronan was disgusted with himself, for letting K bleed into his real life and getting him all over Adam. Because surely, for this, Adam would be well and truly done with him.  

Adam exhaled. His face was a steel-gray sky, unreadable.  

He lifted his hand and placed it on Ronan's bare hip. His thumb brushed over the waistband of his pajama pants. It was a cool blessing on his skin, and it knocked the wind out of him just the same as if Adam had hit him.  

"It’s okay," Adam said. Softly. 

Ronan squeezed his eyes shut. "You don't know anything," he said again. 

Adam's fingers moved, stroking. Sending an electrical current right down to his bones. "I know _you_ ," he said again.  

There was silence, and Adam breaking Ronan open with every small movement of his hand, and then he said, "Did you love him?" 

Ronan let out a single hollow laugh. "Does it matter?" 

"It does." 

Ronan risked a look at Adam, who'd sunk down against the wall and was staring right back at him. Not with any intent, Ronan thought. Not like he was judging. Just like he wanted to know, to put it down in the file. 

"No," Ronan said, and it was true. "No, I very much did not." 

He rolled slowly onto his back, and Adam's hand followed, sliding down to his stomach. It didn't feel like the same skin K had touched and pulled at with his greedy fingers; Adam was a magician, and he was remaking Ronan inch by inch. 

Adam made an _mm_ noise. "Yeah, he didn't really seem like the sort of person you _love_." 

Ronan shook his head. 

"Was it—" Adam's thumb traced a lazy circle. "Was it good?" 

Ronan fixed his eyes on Adam's. His cheeks and the tips of his ears were pink, but he didn't look away. "You're asking me if the _sex_ was good?" 

To Adam's credit, he didn't blink or cringe away from the word _sex_ , like he usually did. The thought of it—Ronan refused to think about it. "I'm asking you if _any_ of it was good, but if it was all sex, or mostly sex, then yeah." 

Ronan considered. There were definitely parts that were good, and parts that were bad, and then everything had started to spiral out of control, or maybe it had been all along—he cracked it open and sat inside it for hours or days at a time, and he still wasn't sure what was what.  

There had been the time he had been sure he was going to black out with K's long, cruel fingers wrapped around his throat, and more than a little terrified, but he had never come harder in his life, and afterward K gave him a flower that screamed when you smelled it (a gesture which struck him as bizarrely kind; he'd kept it in his room for a week until Chainsaw had gotten too close to it one night and ripped it apart out of sheer terror). 

There had been the time that started out as fucking but turned into an all-out brawl and then back into fucking again—when Ronan had showered later he'd found bruises all over his body, and he couldn't remember which ones came from which parts. There had been the time with the lit cigarettes and the time with the knives, and the time K had just kissed him for hours, with a lazy, simmering breed of hunger Ronan was intimately familiar with.  

He thought about the dreams where Kavinsky was still alive or alive again, and the bottle of whiskey stored under his bed (far under, close to the wall, where Gansey wouldn't find it and couldn't even see it unless he dropped down on his belly and shone a flashlight to look) for after the dreams, and how he vacillated wildly between drunkly elated that at least _this_ had not been taken from him and darkly ashamed that he wanted those dreams, and still more afraid that one of these days he would bring K back with him. 

And there was, solidly, the fact that sometimes, in the middle of it—no matter how _in the middle of it_ Ronan was, if Kavinsky was on top of him or inside of him or possibly trying to kill him or all three—his brain had just stated, loudly, definitively: _Parrish._ Or _Adam_. (Like it was doing now, as Adam's fingers stirred and twitched on his abdomen. _Parrish. Adam. Parrish. Adam_.) 

"I don’t know," he said, in lieu of putting _that much dysfunction_ out into the universe. 

Adam made a face that said he didn't believe him.  

"Really, I don't," Ronan said. He shook his head slowly. "I've been—thinking about it, for a while. And I still can't fucking figure it out." 

"I mean," Adam said, ever practical, "if you can't say it was _good. . ._ " 

"Some of it was good," Ronan clarified. "Some of it was definitely bad. A lot of it was scary. Some of it was good _because_ it was scary. And K, he fucked around with my head, a lot. Still does. It, uh—it colors everything weird. So I guess—I can't give you a yes or a no, or _it was good_ or _it was bad_. It just. . . was what it was, and it's done now." 

As Ronan spoke, Adam's elegant, expressive face underwent several changes. His eyebrows furrowed down, his mouth puckered in thought— _no_ _,_ Ronan realized, _concern_. He sucked in his cheeks like he was chewing them. His fingers drummed restlessly on Ronan's skin. 

"Ronan," he said very quietly, "did he. . . hurt you?" 

"Oh _God_ ," Ronan said, embarrassed, "don't make me answer that." 

"It's a simple question, Ronan. Yes or no." 

Ronan scrubbed his hands back over his head, trying to ground himself. "Fuckin'—it's not that easy." 

"I _promise_ you it is." 

"It's _not_ ," Ronan insisted. 

Now Adam looked mad. "Why not? You think it's different for you than it is for everyone else? I know what he did to Matthew, I already _know_ how fucked up he was, I'm asking if he ever _physically—_ " 

"What if I _like_ being hurt, Parrish?" he shot back, too loud. He swore he heard something break in the other room. "Where does _that_ fall on your scale?" 

Adam flushed a deep scarlet. "You know the difference." 

Ronan laughed helplessly.  

"This is useless," Adam said, and he sounded suddenly _done_ with all of it. "You're a hypocrite." 

He made to lift his hand, to get up and away from the utter _lost cause_ that was Ronan Lynch, and the panic that spiked through Ronan was like a flash of lightning. He grabbed Adam's hand in both of his and yanked it up to his chest. 

"No," he said, and he hated how desperate he sounded, "don't." 

Adam looked down at him, awkwardly stretched out with his arm pulled taut. His face was still red, his nostrils still flared. Breathing hard through his nose like a bull. He looked like he might hit Ronan, and Ronan found himself more than a little thrilled by the possibility. 

He didn't pull his hand away, though. Ronan spread his fingers out slowly, placed his palm flat over his heart. Adam watched him, his breathing evening out. His eyebrows resumed their normal place on his face. 

To Ronan's surprise, he said, "I'm sorry." 

His voice was still hard, but like he was trying to make it less so. "Don't be," Ronan mumbled. 

"No, it's—" Adam broke off, shaking his head. "I shouldn't have gotten mad. I know that only makes things worse." 

Ronan didn't say anything, just rubbed his thumbs over Adam's wide knuckles. Adam's jaw was working thoughtfully. 

After a moment he said, "This is. . . uncomfortable." 

Ronan let go of Adam's hand like it had burned him. He felt a prickling flush creep across his face like a rash. 

Adam took his hand back, but only to use it to scoot closer on the mattress. He eased himself down between Ronan and the wall, on his side. One bare inch of space between them. Head on the same pillow. 

He put his hand back on Ronan's heart. Fingers stretched out like he could reach right in— _kali-ma_ —and take it. For all Ronan knew, he could.  

"You don't have to talk to me about it," he said. 

Ronan nodded. The nearness, the simple warmth of him close enough that Ronan would barely even have to _move_ to change everything between them, was unbearable. More than that, it was _criminal_. It shouldn't be allowed. Gansey should be getting an alert on his cell phone. 

"But I hope you know you _can_ ," Adam continued, "if you need to. If you want to." 

He would never. "Right." 

He knew Adam was right, that there was a difference. There was, or there should be, a clear line between someone hurting you because you got off on a certain amount of pain and someone hurting you because they were a crazy, jealous asshole who liked to hurt people. At the very least, it should have been obvious before the 4th of July, before Matthew got fed God knew what kind of pills and shoved in the trunk of a car. 

There was a line. He just wasn't sure he could see it, even now. 

"I changed my mind," Adam said, his voice deathly quiet. The fingers of his other hand brushed into the crook of Ronan's elbow. Ronan swiveled his neck to look at him, dizzyingly close. His lower lip was sucked into his mouth and Ronan could count the freckles sprayed across his nose and cheeks. 

He looked up into Adam's eyes, Henrietta green, and Adam didn't look away. 

"I'm glad he's dead," Adam said.  

Ronan waited for the sting to come, for the affront to shove its way to the fore of his mind. It didn't. There was just the quiet and the dim, and Chainsaw's faint snoring, and the physical awareness of the left side of his body lit up softly like a switchboard, and the realization that he could feel every single one of Adam's fingers. 

Adam was waiting for it too, Ronan saw. He stayed where he was, but his jaw was set like he was bracing for a punch. 

Ronan's mouth twitched into something like the distant cousin of a smile. 

"That's fair," he said.


	3. Wreck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ronan was destroyed, a little bit, by the understanding of what Adam was offering him.

Adam was waiting for him after service on Sunday, planted on the low wall edging the steps with his elbows on his knees. He smiled that gentle, near-apologetic smile at everyone who passed, staving off the whispers about his paint-stained white T-shirt and holey jeans with his good-natured charm. It widened into a grin when Ronan got close. 

"Parrish," Ronan said coolly, though inside he glowed at the thought of Adam waiting for him out here when his apartment was right upstairs. He felt bad for taking his sweet time leaving—Declan had jumped up the second Father McHenry released them, and Ronan didn't want to run into him outside. "This invasion of personal space is getting to be a real _thing_ with you." 

"I _live_ here," Adam pointed out, and Ronan rolled his eyes exaggeratedly. _Semantics_. "Are you busy? I mean, now?" 

"Why would I be?" 

Adam rubbed a hand over the back of his head. "Gansey said you usually don't come back for a while, after service." 

That was true. Sundays were a day for obligation and self-loathing, and for the past few weeks after services Ronan had been spending his time out in the woods (the thoroughly non-magical ones; he couldn't stand going to Cabeswater like this) drinking and dreaming and, once, running-running-running, barefoot, stumbling over roots and trees and downed limbs, not feeling the whip of branches on his face or the splatter of mud on his clothes, not even really noticing where he was going until he'd reached The Field and seen The Cars, and thrown up on the spot. He'd never found his shoes. 

That was the one time Gansey had said something. He'd been silently collecting his church clothes for weeks, and leaving them freshly laundered and folded on Ronan's desk for him to find, guilty, the next day. 

"Christ, Lynch," he'd said disgustedly, breaking his unspoken contract to never mention it and waking Ronan up in the process, "this was a good suit. I ought to burn it. I don't know what the hell you've been getting up to, but take a little more care, would you?" 

Ronan had mumbled something into his pillow, some lame apology. 

"And for God's sake, shower," Gansey snapped, swinging Ronan's door shut as he left. "You smell like a distillery." 

Today, Ronan thought, eyeing Adam, would probably be better. He shrugged and said, "I can make time." 

Adam walked with him back to Monmouth in the oppressive August heat, frowning at the clouds threatening overhead, and also at Ronan, when he rolled his sleeves up and pulled savagely at his tie.  

"How was work?" he asked. 

Adam seemed honestly surprised that he would ask. "Oh, it was fine. Got a Buick in. Big old monster, looks like it's got teeth. You'd like it." 

"What's wrong with it?" 

"Transmission's shot." Adam kicked a rock out of his path. "The guy doesn't want to give up the car, so he's having us replace the transmission, only we can't really _replace_ it, we have to _rebuild_ it, and rebuild the rest of the engine around it. It's a huge pain in the ass." 

"Sounds like it." 

Adam didn't like cars, but he was good with them. He'd decided some years ago that it might help ingratiate him to his father if he took up some of the same interests, thinking maybe if they spent more Sunday afternoons under a hood together, he might spend fewer Sunday nights hiding in his room with cotton balls jammed in his bloody nose. It didn't work, but he got good enough with them that a garage job seemed the next logical step. 

What Adam liked was working with his hands. Fixing things, and building things. Taking things apart and seeing what made them tick. Ronan thought he wouldn't really mind rebuilding that Buick's engine.  

He glanced sideways at him. "Did you have something in mind?" 

"Hmm?" 

"For today, idiot. Remember? You were waiting for me, you asked if I was busy—" 

"Oh," Adam said, and his face lit up conspiratorially. "Yeah, I have some, uh, some ideas." 

He didn't elaborate, and when they got to Monmouth and Ronan yanked open the heavy door and started up the stairs, he stayed at the bottom.   

"I just have to change," Ronan said, "I'll be quick."  

Adam waved a hand. "Take your time, I have to find some stuff down here anyway." 

Confused, Ronan left him there and went up the stairs to the apartment. He opened Chainsaw's cage and she immediately bit him, then took off for the kitchen.  

"What's your problem?" he called after her. She answered him with a series of irritable clicks and croaks. "Little asshole." 

He stripped off his church clothes, and then considered how Adam was dressed. Work clothes meant things might get messy—Adam hated wearing them in front of people if he didn't have to. He pulled on a black tank and his most thoroughly ripped-up pair of jeans, and after a long moment of sitting on his bed staring at them, his heavy black boots. He hadn't worn them since the 4th of July, and they were still coated with dried mud and ash—he was honestly surprised Gansey hadn't thrown them in the incinerator yet.  

Chainsaw was digging in her box of biscuits, and Ronan didn't have the heart to put her back in her cage. He checked to make sure the windows were all closed and went back downstairs.  

Adam wasn't immediately visible in the small employee area. Ronan took a few steps out into the factory. There were a few lights on, but that didn't offset the overall _supremely creepy_ vibe, or the prickling memories of the last time Ronan had been down here, a couple months ago.  

"Parrish?" he called down an aisle lined by hungry-looking machinery.  

Adam's voice answered him, sounding small and far away. "One sec." 

"What are you _doing_?" 

"I told you, I have to find some stuff—just wait right there." 

The silence lay over him like a physical thing, smothering and itchy as a wool blanket. It was too easy to imagine it broken by the click of beaks and talons, and a scream ripped from Adam's throat; he found himself almost crouching, shoulders hunched up around his ears, bracing for it.  

There was a small crash from across the factory floor. He jumped and shouted, " _Adam_ _?_ " 

"I'm okay! Here, here I come." 

He heard Adam's footsteps getting louder, accompanied by a terrible squeaking sound. He jogged into view, panting a little and pulling an ancient cart behind him. There was dust in his hair and his forehead glistened.  

Ronan eyed the cart; it was full of long tools with scarred wooden handles. Tools with sharp, pointy ends, tools with bizarre circular club ends, freakish long cutters, a prybar, and two big sledgehammers. Two sets of yellowed safety goggles hung from the handbar by their straps.  

Ronan tilted his chin up at it.  "What in the hell is all that?" 

Adam looked down at the cart and grinned. "This," he said, sweeping his hand out like it was the prize on a game show, "is my idea." 

Ronan frowned. "Is your idea to break my kneecaps?" 

"God, no. Not _today_ , anyway. Okay." Adam twisted the front of his shirt in his hands. The grin faded off of his face. "First, I guess I should say. . . I know. About. . . the cars." 

"The cars," Ronan repeated. 

Adam looked apologetic. "Kavinsky's cars." 

As it usually did, the name hit Ronan like a sidelong punch. Then the shame of what the cars, and the simple fact of their existence, had done; the shame of what _he_ had done, in creating them. The drugs, the frenzied dreaming, the delirious high nights he spent pushed into the dirt. Forcing things out of his head until he couldn't see. Matthew jammed into the trunk of one of those sharklike Mitsubishis; Prokopenko's engine exploding; Gansey throwing the Molotov cocktail. The pills, small and green and enticing in his palm. K urging him, goading him. _Come on. You've got one more in you. That's kid stuff. Make it better. More. Faster. Harder. Make it good, you bitch._  

The shame of what the cars had done to _Adam_ , in particular. How they had wrecked him. Pulling all that energy out, shaping it hot, only to destroy it. ( _And_ , Ronan found himself asking over and over again, _where did it all go?_ ) 

Of _course_ he knew about the cars. Ronan had never really assumed he didn't. Somehow, though, hearing it like that, like it was something Ronan had tried and failed to keep from him and the thing he felt most was _sorry for Ronan_ , was terrible. 

"Right," Ronan said dryly. "They weren't really a secret." 

"Oh. Well." Adam scratched the back of his head. "I've been thinking about our—conversation—from last week, and how fucked up you've been over this whole thing, with Kavinsky dying, and with how you guys—were. And I, you know, I hate seeing you like this. Not that it's about _me_ , but. I've been trying to figure out if there was something I could do." 

Ronan's face was hot. "You don't need to _do_ anything." 

"I know, I know. You're an island. But. I was up last night, thinking about it. Then I remembered about the cars, and I thought. . . well. . . " 

He threw his arm out over the cart again, fingers splayed emphatically. Ronan stared at him, still feeling tingly and itchy in all the wrong places, the shame settling in his stomach like one of those heavy magnets his dad would feed the cows when Ronan was little.

Adam was clearly waiting for an answer, and he didn't know what to say. "Spell it out for me, Parrish." 

Adam's eyes were wild and sparkling. "Vandalism." 

That wasn't right. Was it? _Is that what he just said?_  

Adam rooted down into the cart, clearing some room to pull out one of the sledgehammers. He hefted it out, and handed it to Ronan.  

It was ugly, and gleaming dully in the bare factory lights, and satisfactorily weighty in his hands. His mouth was dry. 

"You'll feel better," Adam said, by way of explanation.  

His brows knit together as he looked down at the sledgehammer. How he would feel was irrelevant. He thought of all the times Adam had ever yelled at him for breaking shit in a fit of passion. 

"I thought we could do it together."

Ronan found his voice. "Why?" 

"Stress relief. Come on," Adam urged. "Tell me it wouldn't feel good to put that thing through a windshield." 

It would; that wasn't the point. Adam was being suspiciously surface-level. He was a model citizen: he didn't just destroy for the sake of destruction, and he couldn't fathom why Ronan did. " _Why?_ " he asked again, feeling anxiety bleed into his voice. "You—you _hate_ it when I do this." 

The smile dropped. Adam's hands went back to the hem of his shirt, mangling it. "Because. . . I think I get it now."  

His face darkened—no, it stiffened. Painfully. Into the same face he used to make when he thought about going home to his parents. 

"He hurt you," Adam said quietly. Matter-of-factly. He raised his eyes to Ronan's. "I want to break his toys." 

The words exploded behind Ronan's eyes. 

He stared down at the sledgehammer with new, brightly crackling understanding, and imagined himself in that field, surrounded by devastation. Shattered glass, twisted metal, melting plastics. And Adam there with him, unmaking, _creating_ , with him. 

And Ronan, himself, was destroyed a little bit by the understanding of what Adam was offering him. Release. Catharsis. _Anarchy_. Private, brutal chaos. The ability to _give in_ to the raw, ugly, pulsing part of himself he tried to lock away. And something Ronan had never had before—the privilege of sharing it. 

The sledgehammer suddenly felt more than heavy in his hands; it felt _inevitable_. Practically humming with potential. It was too much. 

He put it down carefully, and straightened up again. Adam watched him. His face had changed a little bit, marked with uncertainty. "Well?" 

Ronan took a step forward, then another, into Adam's space, and Adam, who shied away from anyone that got too close, anyone but _Ronan_ , didn't move away. His breathing quickened, almost imperceptibly. Ronan was reminded of the feral cats at the Barns.  

He lifted his arm slowly, broadcasting his intentions from a mile away. Adam could stop it, if he wanted to. Duck away. Laugh it off. _Plausible deniability._  

He didn't. 

Ronan put his hand on Adam's face. Palm curving over his jaw, fingers splaying up over his cheek and down onto his neck. Thumb brushing the corner of his mouth. 

"Parrish," he said once, out loud. Making it real. 

Adam closed his eyes. "God, Lynch," he murmured, a smile quirking up under his thumb, "just do it already." 

Ronan kissed him.  

It wasn't anything—just a brief press of lips on lips, with as little pressure and as much _nothing_ behind it as Ronan could muster—but it was _everything_. It was over in an instant, but it left Ronan reeling with possibility. His fingers twitched on Adam's face. He dropped them. 

His face felt hot. "I—" 

Adam wrapped a hand around the back of his head and pulled him in, mouth already open, clash of lips and teeth. It swept through Ronan like a violent wind. He felt melt, felt his bones catching fire. Adam's tongue snaked into his mouth. He was warm under Ronan's palms and Ronan didn't remember reaching for him.  

And then, all of a sudden, he was pulling back, one final graze of his teeth against Ronan's lower lip, and opening his eyes. His eyes were impossibly green. Sun-drenched canopy over Cabeswater green. 

He smiled, a breathless, unself-conscious smile. "Well?" he said again. 

Ronan's hands were still on Adam's shirt, laid over his ribcage. He could just barely feel the pulse fluttering behind it. All the things he wanted to say were backing up in his chest, tripping over each other in a frenzied bid to rip themselves out of his throat first.  

 _Parrish, I—_  

 _Parrish, we—_  

_Parrish._

Instead, he shoved them all away, and stepped back. Leaned down. Hefted the sledgehammer up in his hands. He tried not to stare at the way Adam's eyes crinkled up, the way his face split into a brilliant grin. 

"Let's wreck some shit," Ronan said.


End file.
